Why didn’t Joni Mitchell perform at Woodstock Festival?
“By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong,” Joni Mitchell famously sang on her 1970 track ‘Woodstock’. More than just a hippie rallying cry or another beautiful ballad from the folk star, the song became the anthem for one of music’s most historic moments. Yet, ironically, Mitchell herself wasn’t there.
Despite penning an ode to the historic festival, which took place between August 15th and 18th, 1969, Joni Mitchell didn’t actually attend the event. However, an incredible audience of over 460,000 others did, making Woodstock one of the largest festivals in history and a true landmark moment in pop culture. It was a phenomenon then, and it remains a phenomenon today as music fans still haven’t grown tired of hearing anecdotes from the event as we look back on it, perhaps through rose-tinted glasses, yearning to be amongst the crowd.
But even at the time when the event was happening, it was clear that the fans that flocked to the leafy New York town knew they were going to be part of something special. With free entry and no tickets necessary, the sea of people trying to get onto the festival grounds was unlike anything music had seen before, as traffic queues were so bad that people fully abandoned their cars, leaving roads clogged up for the duration of the festival as hippies and rockers alike were willing to go to any length to be there.
The situation got so out of hand and was so much busier than organisers ever expected that they had to call in the National Guard for support, getting more food and water airdropped onto the site to help them handle it. Despite being the first Woodstock, with no prior legacy to ensure a good time, the era’s music fans seemed to already know it would be a historic weekend and made sure to be there.
However, the same feelings didn’t really apply to the times’ biggest musicians. There is a misconception that anyone who was anyone played at the festival. In our glorified retrospections on the event, people often think that all the biggest names of the era must have been there and that the lineup must have been a huge and incredible list of names. But in reality, a lot of the biggest acts of the 1960s said no.
The Byrds said no simply because they assumed Woodstock would just be another normal festival. Bob Dylan turned it down and seemed actively annoyed that the event was happening in the quiet town he called home. Jeff Beck claimed he even split up his band to avoid it, stating, “I deliberately broke the group up before Woodstock.” The Doors thought it would be nothing but a “second class repeat of Monterey Pop Festival”, and several other acts missed Woodstock to prioritise being at the Isle Of Wight Festival, which had more of a history and seemed like a better booking to bands at the time.
Joni Mitchell was one of the names who said no; however, she’d later come to regret it.
Why did Joni Mitchell miss Woodstock?
While other acts turned Woodstock down simply because they shrugged the new festival off or couldn’t be bothered with another major outdoor show, Mitchell’s excuse was more understandable. Her reason for missing the festival was purely logistical.
While the folk star originally said yes to the festival and seemed genuinely interested and excited to be there, the closer the date got, the more obvious it became that her schedule couldn’t allow it. She was booked to appear on The Dick Cavett Show on August 18th, and as whispers of the chaos surrounding Woodstock grew louder, her manager worried she wouldn’t make it to the taping in time if she entered the bustle of the crowd. So, at her team’s request, she dropped out to prioritise her other engagement.
However, after seeing the scenes of the festival on the news and after hearing about the event through Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, who played on the Sunday, she was moved to write about it. ‘Woodstock’ was inspired by the images she saw of the mass crowd of hippies, seemingly giving her a way to turn her regret or disappointment over missing out into something beautiful, allowing her to still be connected to the event despite not being there at all.
